Install PHP Composer on a Linux VPS

PHP is one of the most widely used programming languages for building web applications. Sometimes, when building complex web applications, the developers may found it difficult to manage all the application dependencies as well as the required libraries for the same application. However, PHP will not be such widely used if there is not an appropriate solution for this problem. Like in many programming languages, in PHP one can manage the application dependencies and the required libraries by using Composer. Today we will show you how to install Composer on a Linux VPS.

Before we start, let’s explain what exactly Composer is.
Composer is an application-level package manager for the PHP programming language. It is similar for PHP like npm for Node.js and bundle for Ruby. To install the required dependencies for an application, you need to run Composer through the command line. It also provides features like installing applications which are listed at https://packagist.org/. Many PHP-based open-source projects, like Laravel for example, use Composer.

The installation of Composer is fairly easy and straightforward. All you need to have is a Linux VPS with an SSH access and few minutes of your time. First, connect to your virtual server via SSH. Then, download and install Composer by executing the following command:

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php

This should take few seconds. Once the process completes, you can make the ‘composer.phar’ file executable by running the following command:

chmod +x composer.phar

Now, to make Composer globally available for all system users, you can execute the command below:

mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

That’s it. You have successfully installed Composer on your system and have made it available for global use. To check the Composer version and verify that the installation was successful, you can run the following command:

Having this tool installed on your system means you do not have to search for each dependency for your project written in PHP. In other words, you can use Composer to achieve this and facilitate the process of building a web application. Also, by using Composer, you can easily keep you applications up to date by upgrading the dependencies (e.g. libraries) to the latest version available.

To learn more about Composer and find out how to get started with using this package manager, our recommendation is to read the official documentation at https://getcomposer.org/doc/.

Also, if you like to start building your first PHP application by using Composer you can check our guide about how to install CakePHP on a Linux VPS. There you can find practical use of Composer in PHP-based projects.

Of course you don’t have to do any of this if you use one of our Linux VPS hosting services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to install Composer for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

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